


Definition of Good

by avislightwing



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: @ CLINT: HOW COULD YOU, Amnesty Arc, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Characters aside from Ned are just mentioned, Death, Friendship, Gen, spoilers for ep 28, this is just a whole bunch of ned feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 07:18:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19057891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avislightwing/pseuds/avislightwing
Summary: SPOILERS FOR EPISODE 28.Ned Chicane was not a good man.He was a liar and a coward and a thief, and he would be the first to admit it. He ran with the wrong crowd; he stole and he cheated and he never used the same name twice. He was a swindler, a good-for-nothing, a man full of words and empty of anything else.One day, he made the biggest mistake of his life.





	Definition of Good

Ned Chicane was not a good man.

He was a liar and a coward and a thief, and he would be the first to admit it. He ran with the wrong crowd; he stole and he cheated and he never used the same name twice. He was a swindler, a good-for-nothing, a man full of words and empty of anything else.

One day, he made the biggest mistake of his life.

He hadn’t meant for it to happen, out of cowardice more than anything. Boyd had said the house was empty. But Ned, for all his faults, never wanted to hurt anyone, and when he saw the evening news report three towns over that night ( _House Fire, Thousands Stolen, One Dead_ ) he set down the shitty burger he’d ordered and pushed it away. Dead. He’d never left anyone dead before. And Boyd arrested, and he himself lost –

Ned Fuckin’ Chicane had always known he wasn’t a good man, but thinking that felt different, now.

He drove. (That’s all he was _really_  good at.) It was some nondescript vehicle he’d hotwired, that he figured wouldn’t be missed, and when he ran out of gas, it was right next to a sign that said _Welcome to Kepler_   and he walked into town and picked exactly the wrong (right) place to steal from, and suddenly, quite out of the blue –

– he had a friend.

Her name was Victoria, and she was a jaded son of a bitch but hey, they got along, and Ned stayed, and he stayed, and Ned Friendly Chicane realized he liked Victoria and he liked the Cryptonomica and he liked the people around ( _Duck – it’s a nickname_ ), and –

– Victoria started coughing, and then she didn’t stop.

Running the Cryptonomica wasn’t the same without her. They’d scraped by, together, and afterwards (after a week-long hospital stay and a funeral consisting of a spare handful of people), afterwards, Ned hired Kirby and tried to drum up some interest and he started scraping the bottom of the barrel, and then –

– and then he saved Bigfoot (whose name was Barclay, who had once served him a Monte Cristo – of course he remembered Barclay), and he learned the truth about Amnesty Lodge and Kepler, and he met Mama and Aubrey, and they saved the town from a monster worse than any Ned Fuckin’ Discretion Chicane had on display.

Ned wasn’t a good man, but now he was a man with friends.

He had friends, and he was still a liar and a coward and a thief but all the same he distracted a big fuckin’ water monster and dove into it and swam up and up and shot right into its heart, because, he supposed, that was what friends did for each other.

They shot water monsters, and they listened to their friends enthuse about soup, and they blasted themselves into Pizza Hut signs –

– and killed their mothers.

He hadn’t forgotten that night – he never could – but hearing Aubrey through the half-haze in the hospital bed made his heart sink and reminded him of what he’d known all along.

Ned Trustworthy Chicane was not a good man.

He was a liar.

( _You could’ve told me at any time, Ned._ )

And a thief.

( _Did you steal my statue, Ned?_ )

And a coward.

( _Run, like you always do._ )

He should’ve known better.

For a moment, when he was in the hotel room and Boyd Mosche (not a good man either, but he’d been a friend, for a while) was dead at his feet and the horror of seeing himself give everything that mattered away was fresh in his mind, all he wanted was them.

Aubrey.

Duck.

Ned Chicane wasn’t empty anymore, but what was there _hurt_ , and he wanted his friends because fuck, he was scared, and he didn’t know what to do, and then –

– and then.

And then Aubrey was standing in front of him, and she was holding the pendant he took from her house the night her mother died, and he knew, with a strange, aching sense of loss, that he was not a good man.

He saw her hands catch fire, and he begged her to set this aside so they could fix this mess, and for a moment he thought she was going to do it – that she was going to burn him to ash, and he knew he’d deserve it.

What she did do was worse.

So Ned did as she said. He packed up, and he prepared to run. And as he did, he packed up his friends too – the memories from the past months. Aubrey’s smile. Duck’s grimace. Every abomination they’d fought, every night in Amnesty Lodge, every weekend that Aubrey had helped him set up for Saturday Night Dead and every meal with Duck at the ski resort.

Before he ran, though (because he would run – he was a liar, and a coward, and a thief) maybe there was one more thing he could do.

He didn’t go to the archway with sacrifice in mind. Of course not. (He was a coward.)

He just didn’t want anyone else to get hurt because of him.

But when he saw Dani and heard the shot ring out, he was already moving, and –

– he thought of Amnesty Lodge.

He thought of Duck, turning down his destiny because of all the French onion soup he hadn’t tasted. He thought of Aubrey, crying into Mama’s shoulder by his hospital bed. He thought of Barclay, and Moira, and Jake Coolice, and he thought of the time he couldn’t drag everyone out of a burning building but damn if he couldn’t take a bullet.

Ned Chicane was not a good man.

He was a liar.

( _With love – Edmund Kelly Chicane._ )

And a thief.

( _I’m a thief, not a robber. I never meant to hurt anyone._ )

And a coward.

( _Ned doesn’t want anyone else to get hurt because of him._ )

The stars were so beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> find me @ birdiethebibliophile on tumblr sobbing about ned


End file.
